Aftermath

It started with a light whirring noise in the engine compartment while on route 75. What goes through your mind? One, nuts, not another engine problem, and two, what is that? And now that our attention is pricked, we start to notice other things. The car doesn't seem to be moving as rapidly as normal (eyeball the speedometer, 65 mph, not the normal 75; depress the gas pedal and the engine doesn't respond as it normally would). Fortunately, my exit is coming up so I exit onto local two lane road through Weston. There's a light at the intersection for Indian Trace and the engine just doesn't sound right. I accelerate onto Indian Trace after the light turns green and the engine stalls. Night2night editorial voice: from whatever root cause precipitated the series of events for that night as I've described it so far, opportunities for meaningful risk mitigation sufficient to preserve the car, and in retrospect, me, are rapidly vanishing.

The inertia of the car's motion was enough to allow me to steer to the curb. I try to start the car, but the entire instrument panel is dark when I turn the key in the ignition. Light colored smoke is coming from the engine compartment, but I figure the radiator is busted (for whatever reason) and get out of the car to call J for pick-up (about 1 mile from home) and inform her I'll call Allstate Auto while I wait for her. I get back into the car, try the ignition again, the instrument panel lights up this time and engine starter cranks, but no engine ignition apparent. I exit car again and smell still light smoke from engine compartment and note it doesn't smell like antifreeze. Again, although opportunities are shrinking for possible responses, I'm unaware how close to the Volvo singularity I am.

I look under the car and some type of fluid is exiting the engine in a thin stream. Crap. It ignites.

Fire school training while at Shoreham with demo of car fire. Very short time until flames engulf the car.
Don't lose work. Grab laptop, car emergency kit and sunglasses.
911
Back off.
(Inane conversation with 911 operator, "What color is your car? (orange and yellow, soon to be ash black, my car is on fire)"; "What direction are you heading in? (intersection of 84 and Indian Trace Road, my car is on fire, get a blankin fire truck here lady!)" First Broward County Sheriff’s unit responding tells me when he stopped he saw some small flickering flames under the engine; three minutes later the car was engulfed in a fireball.

There's a rather rapid series of events following the start of my return home that evening (we left for Rochester at 4:30 the next morning for R's graduation from Nazareth College).  J shows up in rather wide eyed disbelief after seeing the spectators gathered to watch.  A flatbed tow truck shows up to remove the dripping wreck, and the spot where she burnt is marked by a set of brackets formed from the molten remains of the bumpers.

I get a couple of shots of the car's remains in the towing yard with Allstate's field investigator.  I'll probably start one of my infamous letter writing campaigns asking Volvo (Ford?) whether this usually happens with their cars.

Nothing was recoverable.  Time to look for another car before the boys go back to school.  I walked away and at least saved my work from the last few weeks (maybe I should consider backing up better to the corporate network).  Could it have been a worse outcome?  After I had a chance to think about it, yeah, I think it could have been worse.

Appropriately, this seems like a good place to complete this set of blog posts addressing liberty, risk, the need for both personal and public security, and those mechanisms available for addressing all of it.  I think we like to think things are more rational and predictable than they actually are.  We want all risk mitigated to the point of insignificance, but the reality is that's impossible.  And at those rare points, when we approach those singularities, when we stumble upon an ill-intentioned "black swan", sometimes we can only draw upon our gut instincts, beat the clock, and hope for the best.  Of course, in those situations, you best have your own estimation of acceptable risk, and some general plan for dealing with hostilities.  You can't always count on help arriving in time.

I suspect the occasional reader I have will look at this and say, "Ah, it's just some set-up for another crazy rant of his."  Well, maybe, but, our destinations are pretty uniform and I suspect most of the meaning to be had is in our conduct during the trip.  So here's to the guys and gals who recognize the threats out there, handle them as best they can, but understand risk is never negligible, not in this life. 

The Black Swan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "The Black Swan" explores the impact of highly improbable game changing events (the book was published at the start of the recent financial crash in 2007) and our tendency to undervalue statistical outliers in risk mitigation (like generals, we're always fighting the last war) and justify our approach in an overreliance on "normal" behavior (statistical and anecdotal). The term "black swan" is a reference to what we all know, swans are always white. The pertinent question for him is what happens when a black one shows up. Taleb postulates 3 prerequisites for "black swan" events. "First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable." The original NY Times excerpt from his book is worth reading:

‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’ - New York Times

Which, in my way of reasoning, brings us back to a recent op-ed column by David Brooks in the NY Times. As the congressional wizards deliberate over the financial carnage of the last few years, they come up with a bill to remedy the misbehavior of the larger financial institutions. David (who often seems undervalued to me by "true believer" conservatives) makes an excellent point on the track record of expert panels with regard to preventive efforts. In almost all cases, no one recognizes the black swan.

The Goldman Drama - nytimes.com

My thoughts on the next financial Waterloo waiting for us. I think the impact of sovereign debt accumulated by a slew of developed western countries to provide all matter of goodies to its citizens has yet to fully impact us. I wonder where the legislature for that little misstep is.

The end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:


From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
From Courage to Liberty
From Liberty to Abundance
From Abundance to Selfishness
From Selfishness to Complacency
From Complacency to Apathy
From Apathy to Dependency
From Dependency back into Bondage"

- Alexander Tytler, 18th century Scottish historian, Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.
 
Where do you think democratic progressives have brought us today?

"All the news that's fit to print."

Results Unproven, Robotic Surgery Wins Converts - nytimes.com

Old joke: Severity scale for lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. In my areas of professional endeavor, when I execute comparative studies I'll use commonly excepted statistical methods like 2-sample t-tests, which in turn require certain technical prerequisites like, is the population's behavior I'm studying normal (you know, that old college friend of ours, the bell curve)? Am I comparing populations which can be sorted by the variables I've selected to partition them by? Of course as the health care reform continues to simmer, the usual suspects (Our editorial policy does not affect our news editing functions. No really.  Stop laughing.) appear with their helpful information to educate the public with. Stuff does get technical, but out and out misrepresentation doesn't help. Here's a data set which, if it was normal, would look like a diagonal line:

What does this mean?  Well, most statistical methods assuming a "normal" probability distribution will probably give you a questionable conclusions on questions like, "Does treatment "A" effect my process the same way as treatment "B"?", or "What is the probability of making what we call a Type I error (the thing I have said is true is actually false)?".  More importantly, what does this have to do with "The Paper of Record".  Notice the Times is talking to physicians who utilize manual surgical methods for relieving prostrate restrictions of the male urethra and the recent popularity of Intuitive Surgical's DaVinci system with urologist patients (1.  Study participants should not bias your conclusions).  Further, the Times produces data saying clinical outcomes between manual methods and more instrumented methods are not statistically different.  The implication is "idiot" patients are being sold by clever marketing campaigns which consume more healthcare dollars, while delivering few real benefits.  What the Times buries in the article is the fact the Medicare data used confounds robot surgical systems and endoscopic surgery.  They both use instruments, and they both work with small incisions, but the robotic system is much more precise.  Does this matter?  It needs to be validated by actual clinical outcome studies (which take time), but I suspect the answer from the anecdotal record is yes (not to mention the reduced postop recovery time).

The interesting thing about the article is it seems to unjustifiably conclude we don't need this "expensive", "unproven" medical device.  Does this article seem to prepare the ground for the Times support of health care reform (which focuses on basic medical services we want to get for "free")?  I'll let you reach your own conclusions, but I'm a cynic with most media reports these days.

And if my prostrate doubles or triples in size, I'll probably look for a urologist who has an extensive track record with the DaVinci machine.

Would you like a little more tea?

A "Tea Party" convention was held in Nashville a few weeks ago, and I was impressed by the fiscal conservatism and calls for legislative transparency which seemed to characterize the majority focus of the six hundred attendees. Of course, there was also the Tom Tancredo rant on civic literacy (which seemed to run off the track shortly after he started with the references to illiterate foreign socialists putting Barack Obama in the White House), the “Birthers” (who believe Obama shouldn’t be in the White House because he isn’t really a native born US citizen and Hawaii officials are conspiring to hide the birth certificate), and the “Truthers” (who believe 9/11 was also some type of government conspiracy, or at least government “white wash” of the actual events). I’d like to think these folks were a really minority position in this nascent movement, but the truth is they were obviously there in some number. Glen Beck, interviewing Rick Perry’s Republican “Tea Party” primary opponent Debra Medina, concluded the interview real quickly once Debra aired her belief some of the “Truther” accusations needed to be investigated thoroughly (where’s Oliver Stone when you need him). Hopefully Ms. Medina’s polling will go into decline going forward.

I like fiscal conservatism and legislative transparency, but really could do without the conspiracy nuts (no objective evidence of anything other than their own delusions), or outright bigots. Still, as a First Amendment absolutist, I really do want these people to speak so the movements they attempt to represent can disown them (the early conservative movement in the Republican party in the 50’s and 60’s was forced to do the same thing with the KKK and John Birch folks who needed to be identified as repulsive to real conservatives). What proportion of “Tea Party” folks are represented by present day “repulsive” extremists? My gut guess is 10 to 20%. Still, I hope the majority disowns these folks in a timely fashion. The country’s voters deserve more than a choice between “liberal” and “liberal-light”.

History

I suppose we never really think of ourselves as living in the midst of historic events, we still have to worry about paying the utility bills.  Still, the last week has been both horrifying and interesting.

It's been 6 days since the shallow 7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince in Haiti.  Estimates this evening are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the structures which collapsed during that minute long assault.   That country has been a basket case for so long, it's not surprising so many people died.  If you compare the magnitude 7.1 Bay Area Earthquake of 1989 (65 fatalities) with the Haiti quake it rapidly becomes apparent the major difference between the outcome of the two events is the poverty and lack of building codes in Haiti.  In my opinion both of these conditions are driven by the horrible political heritage of that land and the tenuous nature of social stability among its' people.  Satellite views of the area not only show the horrifying devestation of the quake, but also the social partition between Haiti and the Dominican Republic which also shares the island of Hispaniola.  Of course for all of the money spent there, so little has improved for its' people.  Still, this is a humanitarian disaster, so I send my donation and hope it makes some small difference in the lives and deaths of Haiti's people.

In Massachusetts, republican State Senator Scott Brown has come out of nowhere in the past month to challenge democrat Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.  In Massachusetts alone, that development would be astounding, but Senator Scott Brown would represent a 41st vote for the Republican Senate Caucus and the end of the Senate Democrats fillibuster proof majority.  With the current Health Care Reform bill (pick Harry Reid or Nancy Peliosi's effort) being advanced as a strictly partisan offering which rewards partisan allies, and creates another huge entitlement program under the subterfuge of advancing healthcare for those without coverage, I would prefer an actual bipartisan bill which would look to improve medical insurance coverage without totally revamping the medical care system in this country.  I would expect we'll know by this time tomorrow how things went.  I'm trying to be optimistic, but elections are tough to predict.

On a professional level, my efforts to totally revamp the Risk Management system at M continue with another set of VP level edits.  More details tomorrow.

The Quality of Mercy is not Strained

Saw an article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago regarding some former CEO/banker who having been dismissed from his rather lucrative employment in March 2008 has been living off his serverance and savings since then.  The rather staggering thing about the subject of the article was his absolute incapacity to deal with changing circumstances (still paying 2 kid's tuitions at private schools at 13K a pop, giving up Starbucks for a 7Eleven coffee run (and adding up saved money on recycyled cups without taking into account getting into the car every day for coffee) because nobody in Maryland uses a coffee maker; wife still doesn't work (even with a set of professional credentials) because the jobs offered didn't extend enough consideration to her child rearing schedule in original family life (apparently unemployed hubby can't watch the kids)).  Really staggering display of a total incapability to deal with anything outside of the very comfortable lines drawn in his earlier existence.  This got me to thinking (yeah, I know, big surprise).

We pray for deliverence, but want to quiz the messengers.  Sometimes we want to know the motives of "the calvary" before we agree to ride out with them. 

Two weeks ago, I dodged a bullet for reasons that truthfully elude me.  I suppose the reasons don't really matter, but sometimes when we survive unfortunate events our thankfullness is also seasoned by some humility (it didn't have to work out like this, and the world would have little noted or cared if it didn't).  So, as to my original question on whether the higher quality of mercy is "not strained", I guess it doesn't make any real difference.  We live to fight another day and best keep a sharper eye out, the next time we may not be so fortunate.